annafaherty

About annafaherty

A visit to the Penguin Books website today throws up the fact (if, of course, you believe it's real and not just a smart marketing ploy) that the "most searched terms" on the site are: Penguin canvas bag and Take That. More evidence of the non-book product potential for publishers with a strong brand [...]

Anyone who has every tried it knows clearing permission to use copyrighted material in another publication is a pain. It can take ages to find the original copyright holder in the first place, ages to receive a response from the publisher, you may have to chase several times, you may have to correspond with the [...]

Publishing isn't just about producing and selling books - or producing and selling book-like things. A growing number of 'book' publishers and newspapers now offer existing customers new products and services and/or court new customers with their extended brand. From the examples I tracked down when researching a teaching session on 'product and service diversification' [...]

Last night at the ICA, Roy Greenslade, Professor of Journalism at City University and Guardian Media columnist, spelled out the crisis in the newspaper industry: "In newspapers - but not books - print will die, and is in the process of dying." In that one sentence he summed up not just the challenge facing every [...]

So as JK Rowling, and her publishers Bloomsbury, head off for a court date with the estate of Willy the Wizard author, Adrian Jacobs, I was a little confused about the logic. Jacobs’ estate claims not that Rowling has plagiarised the text word for word, but that aspects of the plot, sub-plots, themes and incidents [...]

Ever since my then housemate, who worked on pop-up children’s books, told me she was having a meeting with a ‘paper engineer’, I’ve wanted that job title. How cool? Making things. Amazingly complex things. Out of something so plain, ubiquitous and cheap. Unfortunately, the closest I ever came to doing that for a living was [...]

Believe Amazon and you'll believe that writers have spent years (“more than a century” to use their words) struggling with the dilemma of whether to write under 10,000 words or over 50,000. From this standpoint, the online books-and-more retailer today announced the launch of Kindle Singles, non-fiction works twice the length of a New Yorker [...]

At the recent Kingston University annual publishing conference on self-publishing, the highly talented David Gifford acted as 'conference artist', churning out a bunch of insightful cartoons based on speakers' presentations. This one - inspired by a comment by writer and writer's cafe co-director Harriet Smart - is probably my favourite. You can see more pics [...]

Apple describe the iPad as a "magical and revolutionary product" and the iBooks reading experience as "a joy". But when I finally got my hands on one of this year’s must have gadgets, courtesy of a fellow reveller at a recent FutureBook drinks party I felt mightily disappointed. Not at first, you understand. Because, in [...]